I was being very blessed by this book until I left it, half-read, on a plane. 😦 But no worries though, because I was given this book by the publisher for review, I wanted to do a good job, so on day one I gave the book a thorough inspectional reading. I read the beginning and end of each chapter to get a good feel for the book before I dove in. After just reading that much of the book I could tell I was in for a real treat, and a timely one.

This book arrived to me in just the right time in my life. Recently, my wife has been telling me to quit complaining about things. So when I saw the offer to get a free copy of the book, in exchange for a review of the book, I couldn’t pass it up. As I got into the book,the first thing I noticed was it’s readability. The author’s humor was laced throughout, enough, but not to much. I loved how he used the concept of a conspiracy to introduce the very real problem of discontentment that plagues society today. And he correctly identifies the root of this problem as sin. Then he offers the correct solution to the problem, namely, contentment in all that Christ is for us.

I could go on to a play by play of what I did read of the book, but I feel it will be more useful to you to tell you that this is a book that I would highly recommend to anyone that struggles with finding contentment in their circumstances. The content of this book was extremely helpful to me when I lost it. It is my prayer that whoever finds that book on the plane reads it, and is as blessed by it as I was.

This is my first book review, so please forgive me for its short length. Perhaps I’ll get better at this as I review more books.

Let’s Call This An Open Invitation

To what, you might ask. Discussion. Not debate. Dialogue. Open, honest discourse. As a Christian, I hear the christian opinion everyday. I read it in blog posts. I hear it in Youtube videos. Naturally, I gravitate to it. In the course of things, I come across other points of view as well, but one thing that I don’t get too much of is communication with everyday, regular, nonbelievers as to why the believe (or don’t believe) the way they do.

I have some very dear friends, and family, whose views are totally opposite of mine. You are my target audience. Or should I say the intended recipients of my invitation. I want to talk to you. I want to know what makes you tick. I am not looking for a debate per se, although debate may occur as a natural consequence. I just want friendly discussion about our differing views of religion, philosophy of life, etc. I am not looking to pick a fight.

Our proposed conversation could take place in a variety of forms, I’ll let you decide. Some options would be:

blog posts

Facebook notes

private email

talking on the phone

I would say that we could go 15th, 16th century style and take turns publishing books to state our viewpoint, but for the sake of time (and the fact that I’m not smart enough to do that), we’ll use one of the above methods, or another reasonable method of your choice.

I’d prefer to stick to a written format, but if talking we must do, then talk we shall.

I promise not to try and convert you (unless you ask me to 😉 ). I deeply respect each of you that I have in mind, and would not undermine the intelligence I know you all possess. I’m just curious about your position is all. I am firmly established in what I believe, so you would have a hard time converting me as well :).

In particular, I’m looking for the following positions to discuss: atheists, anti-theists, secular humanists, agnostics, or new agers/ middle eastern philosophy. I know that the members of these groups are usually pretty intelligent, willing to reason. Come, let us reason together.

Right now I’m not really focusing on other religions like mormonism or witnesses, although I’d probably be willing to talk, shoot me a line if you feel compelled.

If any of these are you, and you’re willing to open up about it, and follow things out to logical conclusions, then I ask you to contact me. Feel free to comment below, or contact me privately via jcrappel at gmail dot com. Thanks for reading, and I’m looking forward to talking to you.